UChicago Physicists Help Decipher Gravitational Waves

Daniel Holz, associate professor in physics at the University of Chicago, explains the historic discovery of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), announced on Fe...

Summary

Daniel Holz, associate professor in physics at the University of Chicago, explains the historic discovery of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), announced on February 11, 2016. In addition to Holz, the members of UChicago’s LIGO team are Ben Farr, a McCormick Fellow in the Enrico Fermi Institute, and graduate students Hsin-Yu Chen and Zoheyr Doctor.
The UChicago physicists played a significant role in analyzing data from LIGO, helping to characterize the two colliding black holes that produced the signal that the facility detected on September 14, 2015.